National Post (National Edition)
Jolie defends controversial child-actor auditions
For her September cover story for Vanity Fair, Angelina Jolie gave her first, highly-anticipated interview post-split from ex-husband Brad Pitt, and in it she said a lot more than just how she’s been carrying on as a single mom to their six children.
Perhaps most notably, Jolie discussed her upcoming film, First They Killed My Father, based on Cambodian Loung Ung’s autobiography on the Khmer Rouge genocide. But it’s in the way she explained casting the main character, a young Cambodian girl, that called her ethics into question and left the internet in an outrage last week:
“To cast the children in the film, Jolie looked at orphanages, circuses, and slum schools, specifically seeking children who had experienced hardship. In order to find their lead, to play young Loung Ung, the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away. The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie. ‘Srey Moch (the girl ultimately chosen for the part) was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,’ Jolie says. ‘When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.’ Jolie then tears up. ‘When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.’”
In a new statement, released to the Huffington Post, Jolie responded to accusations of exploitation, saying, “Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present. Parents, guardians, partner NGOs whose job it is to care for children and medical doctors were always on hand every day, to ensure everyone had all they needed. And above all, to make sure that no one was in any way hurt by participating in the re-creation of such a painful part of their country’s history . ... I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened. The point of this film is to bring attention to the horrors children face in war, and to help fight to protect them.”
Jolie and her co-producer Rithy Panh, also noted that the moment was inspired by “a real episode” from Ung’s life, and that the children “understood very well that this was acting, and makebelieve.”
While that certainly may have been Jolie’s intent, knowing that, in the audition, Moch became “overwhelmed with emotion” as “all these different things came flooding back,” and that she wanted to use the money for her grandfather’s funeral, opting for method acting from poverty-stricken Cambodian children becomes a little harder to accept, instead of, you know, hiring actual young actors.